As the year turns, how about a stroll down Zeitgeist lane? Our annual collection of the most-visited names, images, and news stories from around the world is yours to peruse. If you use Flash, don't miss the Interactive Zeitgeist for a more dynamic look back. As for 2005, here's to your health and happiness.

Like so many others around the world, we're following the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami that has hit many parts of Asia and India. The only positive outcome of this sort of disaster is that people quickly swing into action. The Internet enables us all to get timely information from blogs like this as well as news sites, and by linking people to donation centers. Here are a few already set up to handle donations for victims throughout the region. Our thoughts are with everyone who has been affected.

At Google we take user email seriously. If you ask us for help with a Google-related problem, we'll do our best to solve it. If you send us product feedback, we'll consider and perhaps implement your suggestion. And if you impugn the artistic integrity of the guy who draws the Google doodles, you can expect a very direct and very public smackdown.

Here's the doodle that graced our home page on Wednesday:

And here's an email received by our User Support team, along with the Blog's response:

In reference to holiday illustration #3, I am curious as to how the larger polar bear learned, over a period of a few days, how to roll blobs of snow in almost perfect spheres. I mean, wouldn't this require a few thousand years of mental evolution, not to mention the concept of throwing objects and the idea of guessing how much power to put behind their throw in order for the snowball to land in an acceptable radius of the target...

Dear User:

Thank you for your recent email. We appreciate your concern but must confess to considerable bewilderment with regard to various statements you make about the home page doodle of 12/22/04. First, what makes you assert that those are "almost perfect spheres?" If you look more closely, you'll see that the snowballs in question are in fact somewhat oblong, which is to say, wholly producible by a polar bear paw. Second, why would you assume that the polar bear threw the snowballs into that pile, when placing them there would be much easier?

...Well, we won't have to worry about this because apparently the larger polar bear got preoccupied with hosing down the O for no apparent or logical reason. And how exactly can this hose have running water if they are in the Arctic tundra? I'll give your illustrator the benefit of the doubt but come on... Unless the polar bears have developed a heating system for their water supply in order to prevent freezing, this wouldn't be possible. And please, don't use the common "well, they stole the hose from the humans which already have heating methods under development." That is such a cliché...

Again with the erroneous assumptions. In this case, you conclude that the presence of a heated hose derives not from nearby humans, but from some technologically advanced and therefore highly unlikely polar bear society, because having humans produce the hose "is such a cliché." Well, life is full of clichés; their prevelance, in fact, is precisely what makes them clichés. As for why the polar bear is hosing down the O: we expect that the past few days have by now made clear that this series of doodles is telling a story whose conclusion none of us have yet to grasp.

...Also, considering the size of the polar bear and the circumference of the hose, why would he or she even need help with controlling it? It just seems like the back polar bear is holding up the hose just for the sake of holding up the hose. I mean, these are powerful bears. They can control a small hose with a medium sized jet of water gushing out without requiring the assistance of another bear...

Well, this being a holiday doodle and Google being a family-friendly company, the polar bear story has a family-oriented holiday theme; i.e., the daddy polar bear is spraying down the O as part of a plan to (as you must by now realize) decorate it in a festive manner, and the baby polar bear is "helping."

...And where exactly did they learn that holding the back of the hose stabilizes the front part? I'm assuming there isn't a television anywhere close to them. Did they just somehow, by the luck of the draw, decide to hold the hose in that certain way which is so conveniently similar to the method fire fighters use to stabilize their hoses? One final observation: there are more snowballs in picture number 3 than there are in picture number 2. Where did the extra ones come from and why did the polar bear decide to leave them sitting there if he took the time to neatly organize his previously?

Dude, in the interim of time which elapsed between doodle #2 and doodle #3, they made more snowballs, okay? And in the interim of time which elapsed since we began this response, our attitude toward you, dear correspondent, has segued from righteous indignation at your illogical attack on our graphic designer to warm-hearted gratitude that you cared enough to write to us in the first place. We love all our users, especially those who take the time to brighten our day with such graceful, witty emails. Enjoy the rest of Dennis' holiday doodles. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Ten years ago, when you named a new child, you just needed to make sure the moniker was easy to spell and didn't rhyme with "smelly" or any other schoolyard taunt. But now, you've got to consider the search engine effect: is the name easily located via a Google search, or will your kid be confused with a multitude of John Smiths?

The solution? A unique name for which the only possible search results would be related to your child. But not actually "unique," since Social Security records tell us that239 girls named Unique were born in 2002 (scroll down to "popularity of a name"). Imagine a baby boy named "Angus Katzenjammer." He'd have a wide open field since that search currently doesn't return any results. Or perhaps a young lass is named "Humid Lipstocking." With the exception of Google helpfully asking "did you mean Humid Lipsticking," it would be perfect.

In reality, you don't need to be famous or have a weird name to increase the odds of appearing in Google's search results. Just start a blog or build a website and you should eventually find yourself in our index. In an interesting twist on self promotion, some people have even bought AdWords ads which would result in the display of small text ads next to search results for their name. Yes - it is truly a brave new world.

Hunter Walk(cursed by having a name consisting of two real words)AdSense Partner Manager

Nothing is more important to us than the security of the products we offer to our users. So we'd like to thank Professor Dan Wallach and his Rice University students, Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson, for discovering and reporting a small flaw that existed in Google Desktop Search. When Desktop Search showed personal computer search results as part of users' overall web search results, there was a security hole that conceivably could have allowed a malicious site to access small portions of that information. To our knowledge, nobody was actually affected by this problem, and if you're currently using Desktop Search, your machine has been automatically updated with a software fix that ensures the security of your personal information. You can confirm this by going to the Desktop Search home page and clicking the "About" link. On the About Desktop Search page, you'll see that you're now using Beta 121004, which contains the security update. Finally, you can keep track of all the Google Desktop Search releases here.

Feel that hot breath on the back of your neck? That's the deadline for holiday shopping drawing closer, closer, ever closer. Panic not. Google will help. We've packaged all our software tools into a convenient holiday keepsake that fits nicely into a stocking or adds a festive touch to that new computer you're giving your beloved. It's absolutely free to download, free to install and free to use, so no mucking about with gift receipts. There's Google Desktop Search and the Picasa photo organizer and the Google Toolbar and the Google Deskbar -- a veritable cornucopia of time-saving Google products for the PC. And it's all yours for the giving with just one click. We've even provided festive gift certificates and handcrafted packaging artwork so you can burn your own gift CD. The Gift of Google is appropriate for all ages and connection speeds. Batteries not included.

Some of us admit to a misspent youth lurking in libraries, devouring books on anything from "the survival of the fittest" or the explorations of Lewis and Clark to the essence of philosophy or Victorian detective yarns. This immersion has made us certain of one thing: there are a million and one books are out there waiting to be found (tens of millions, by some counts) - but library collections just aren't that easy to search.

Which is why we are thrilled to begin scanning book collections belonging to the University of Michigan, Harvard. Stanford, Oxford, and the New York Public Library, so that they become more searchable.

We launched the first part of Google Print in October to make the world of books more discoverable. The thing is, most books in the world are out of print. By working with libraries as well as publishers, we'll have access to millions of books, including many unique volumes that haven't been read in years. Soon a new generation will be able to discover them too.

Today we launched Google Suggest, a new Labs project that provides you with search suggestions, in real time, while you type. We've found that Google Suggest not only makes it easier to type in your favorite searches (let's face it -- we're all a little lazy), but also gives you a playground to explore what others are searching about, and learn about things you haven't dreamt of. Go ahead, give it a spin.

The project stemmed from an idea I had a few months ago, and since then I've been working on it in my 20% time, which is a program where Google allows their employees to devote 20% of their working hours to any project they choose. What's really amazed me about this project is how in a matter of months, working on my own, I was able to go from a lunch table conversation to launching a new service. In my opinion, this is one of the things that really makes Google a great place; that the company's systems, resources and, most important, people are all aligned to make it as easy as possible to take an idea and turn it into something cool.

Recently we relocated to Japan to take on the challenge of extending Google's global engineering organization by opening a new R&D center in Shibuya, Tokyo (co-located with the existing sales office). We've both been at Google for many years and hope to use our experience to transfer our culture and technical knowledge to a new place with a new group of engineers. It will be an exciting adventure. Just as no two snowflakes are exactly alike, over the years, we expect the Tokyo office will develop its own variation of Google's engineering culture.

Last week we officially opened our doors, and celebrated the occasion with a series of open houses (see pictures below), hosting more than 300 students, professors, researchers, professional engineers, media, and partners. Our goal here is the same as all the other engineering locations (Hi Bangalore! Hi Zurich!) - recruit great engineers from a diverse set of backgrounds (not just search!), give them a fun and exciting work environment and freedom to explore their ideas, and then watch them create innovative technology that impacts the world. If you, or your friends, think you might be a good fit for our Tokyo organization and enjoy a new adventure, drop us a note (with resume) at jobs@google.com or take a look at our jobs page.

Whether your interests run to knitting or brain surgery, chances are good other people out there share them. The new Google Groups not only helps you find information on millions of topics; now you can actively share ideas and opinions with others about each and every obsession of yours.

And if you don't find a group already focused on your passion, by all means start one. Invite others to join your group so that all interested parties can read and respond to messages, share opinions and ideas via email or your own group's web page. If you're looking for a group to join, we could definitely use some thoughtful insight (or idle speculation) over at my space elevator group.

Shannon BaumanAssociate Product Manager, Google Groups

P.S. In related news, we have restored advanced date search to Google Groups. As for the post above, we had a publishing snafu last Thursday, so you may already have seen this item.

Well, it's Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when every patriotic American must either watch football or go shopping. If neither end zone celebrations nor mall garage traffic jams make your day, why not try Froogle? In honor of the kick-off (so to speak) of the holiday spending-splurge season, we've spruced up our online shopping engine to make it as easy as possible for you to find and buy the products you and your loved ones really, really need.

For one thing, we're going international. A few weeks ago, we launched Froogle U.K.; this week we're pleased to announce that German-speaking shoppers can now search for and buy products that are actually for sale in Germany.

And back here in North America, we're now offering Froogle Store Ratings, which let you check the reputation of online stores by looking for "Reviews" links or aggregated ratings scores in your Froogle search results. We've also improved those results by grouping items together so you can more easily compare products. You can even narrow your search by searching by store. And finally, to ease those nightmares about receiving yet another itchy wool sweater, our new Froogle Wish List is easy to create (just click "My Shopping List" to get started), and even easier for your friends and family to access and (hopefully) heed.

Mick Jagger once insisted that you can't always get what you want. This holiday season, the Froogle team is doing their best to prove him wrong.

We release a lot of stuff here at Google, but this one I'm particularly excited about. Every year near the holidays my Mom starts asking me to tell her what I would like for Christmas. I'm usually bad at getting her a list, and more than once I've received argyle socks, but now I'll be happy to point her to my Froogle Wish List.

Want one of your own? Just go to Froogle, search for a few things from thousands of online merchants, and click 'Add to list' for any item you want to add to your Shopping List. You'll need to sign in to your Google account or create one if you haven't already (if you have a Gmail account or Groups 2 login, you already have a Google account). If you want to share items, just click the 'In Wish List' checkbox and whammo, you now have a web page of your holiday wish list to share with friends and family. This year maybe I'll get iPod socks instead of argyle!

Much of scholarly research is learning what others have discovered and building on it. As the famous Isaac Newton quote goes, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Today we are launching the beta version of a service which we hope will help this process. Google Scholar is a free service that helps users search scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports.

Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders your search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to aren't online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.

We at Google have benefited much from academic research. This is one of the ways in which we are giving back to the research community. We hope Google Scholar will help all of us stand on the shoulders of giants.

Since more than half of all Blogger users are outside the U.S., I recently took a virtual tour of blogs around the world from Armenia to Zambia. It is amazing to see that so many people create and update their free websites in such a wide variety of languages - all of them using an English-only version of Blogger. If these folks can create that much content working with a foreign language tool, what could they accomplish if Blogger were available in their own languages?

We'd like to find out. The Blogger team has begun the process of internationalizing our service. While the posting interface and some other pages throughout Blogger are not yet translated, they soon will be. Meanwhile, right now native speakers of French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Korean will see an increasingly familiar version of Blogger in their own languages when they sign in.

We're all super excited that even more people around the world will be able to put their voice on the web using a Blogger interface that feels more like home.

You probably never notice the large number that appears in tiny type at the bottom of the Google home page, but I do. It's a measure of how many pages we have in our index and gives an indication of how broadly we search to find the information you're looking for. Today that number nearly doubled to more than 8 billion pages. That made me smile.

Comprehensiveness is not the only important factor in evaluating a search engine, but it's invaluable for queries that only return a few results. For example, now when I search for friends who previously generated only a handful of results, I see double that number. These are not just copies of the same pages, but truly diverse results that give more information. The same is true for obscure topics, where you're now significantly more likely to find relevant and diverse information about the subjects. You may also notice that the result counts for broader queries (with thousands or millions of results) have gone up substantially. However, as with any search engine, these are estimates, and the real benefit lies with the queries that generate fewer results.

The documents in Google's index are in dozens of file types from HTML to PDF, including PowerPoint, Flash, PostScript and JavaScript. Together these pages represent a good chunk of the world's information, but hardly all of it. That's why we keep building more advanced systems for crawling the web and creating more sophisticated indices to sort what we find. So 8 billion pages is a milestone worth noting, but it's not the end of the road. The real test is how well we do in finding what you want from within those pages. We'll keep improving that too.

When people ask me about what it's like to work at Google, I can only say it's a lot of fun when Larry asks, "How can you help as many people as possible earn a living from Google?" Our answer to that question today is the Google Advertising Professionals program. It's our first step in establishing direct working relationships to everyone who wants to work with us to provide relevant search results or relevant ads.

The program makes it easy to manage lots of AdWords accounts for advertisers and clients, and offers a way for providers to showcase their proficiency with AdWords. And we've created an online learning center with dozens of self-paced lessons on the most up-to-date AdWords information.

There are already thousands of firms and individuals who provide services related to AdWords, and many who could use those services. We hope this program helps them connect in meaningful and rewarding ways.

Okay, so WWWDOT - GOOGLE = DOTCOM, and M and E are interchangeable, and there are no leading zeros. Can you solve this equation? Turns out plenty of you can. In fact, maybe you've already taken the Google Labs Aptitude Test, which we published a couple months ago as a recruiting tool and general shout-out to our math-and-CS-minded peers.

...and so on. If you followed that, you might want to check out MathWorld.com's impressive list of solutions to the thornier GLAT problems. The authors, Ed Pegg, Jr. and Eric Weisstein, declined to tackle most of the GLAT's more whimsically or philosophically inclined essay questions (wimps), but they did, with considerable aplomb, meet the challenge of composing a search-seasonality-related haiku:

Congratulations for a job well done to Ed, Eric, and everyone else who sent in their own solutions. Those Googlers who understand this stuff were impressed with the quality of the work we received. And the rest of us enjoyed the haiku.

Here at Google we like puzzles. A lot. We do them to relax, we use them in recruiting campaigns, and we're even a sponsor of the World Puzzle Championship. So, as Google's official in-house puzzle geek, I'm pleased to report that recently, after a two-year dry spell, Team USA finally recaptured the World Puzzle Championship title, our eighth victory in the 13-year history of the championship.

In fact, "13" was a common theme for this year's contest, which was held in Opatija, Croatia, a small town on the Adriatic Coast; all the individual rounds had 13 puzzles, and all the time limits were multiples of 13 minutes. Some of the more interesting events included a "relay" round where the solution to each puzzle was needed to solve the next puzzle, and two rounds where information from the 12 initial puzzles were needed to solve the final 13th puzzle. Here's an example of one particularly nasty brain-teaser from that round:

(For those readers who haven't solved it already, shade in nine regions such that no two shaded regions touch (even at a corner) and that eight of them "point" in different directions. The numbers outside the grid tell you how many shaded regions there should be in that row or column.)

I wound up placing 5th in the individual rankings; first place went to Niels Roest from The Netherlands in a very impressive comeback victory in the playoffs. But the most enjoyable aspect of the trip may have been the travel itself, which took us from Munich, Germany to Trieste, Italy, through Slovenia and across the Istrian peninsula to the Hotel Ambasador (yes, only one S), where I enjoyed a stunning 180-degree view of the Mediterranean from my room (when I wasn't solving puzzles, of course).

As you might have heard, there's an election coming up. If you're as obsessed as we are (okay, if you're half as obsessed as we are), we'd like to suggest a few ways that Google can help enable your political jones.

Google News, of course, is constantly packed with a crazy amount of stories, from wire service reports to partisan pundits, global opinion to intrepid bloggers. Setting up a few Google Alerts will keep your in-box up-to-the-minute with every last late-breaking poll result, local ballot initiative, Electoral College analysis and, alas, hanging-chad-related court filing. And stay tuned to Google Zeitgeist for our ongoing analysis of the most recent web search trends.

We've always loved Powers of 10, the classic 1977 film by Charles and Ray Eames that takes you on a visual ride from inside an atom to the edge of space in under 10 minutes. It turns out Keyhole brings a similarly astonishing perspective to its visual mapping software, and it's an incredibly powerful information tool besides. That's why we've acquired the company. We like the way the Keyhole folks think, and can't wait to get under the hood to see how this service might assist Google users around the world in finding the information they need.

If you've been following Google closely, you'll know that we don't do a lot of marketing type activities. We prefer to let our products speak for themselves. That's worked pretty well so far, but as we've introduced an increasing array of services, from Orkut to Gmail, there have a been a lot of Google voices competing for your attention. So, to get a feel for exactly what people are hearing from us, we recently took part in our first live event, DigitalLife, in New York's Javits Convention Center. Our ears are still ringing.

If you'd like to up your own Google experience points, check out our helpful help pages and our advanced search tips or download our easily concealed cheat sheet. It's not that all you know about Google is wrong; it's just that, most likely, all you know isn't all there is to know.

Those of us who are lucky enough to make our living thinking about challenging problems know that real breakthroughs are rarely as discontinuous as they might appear. Sometimes it's a matter of timing. Sometimes it's a matter of two failed approaches coming together with a twist that makes them right. So when we win recognition for what Google has become, we like to remind ourselves that many others have contributed to our success. As Newton said, "If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

The honors are truly and deeply appreciated. But Larry and Sergey have always been quick to acknowledge that their early work was made possible by the support of the faculty and staff of Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Maryland. Since Google left academia, many fine engineers have contributed to its development. And then there are the thousands of users who help us improve our products through beta testing, feedback and ideas, and simply by using Google day in and day out. Unfortunately that's too many names to put on a plaque. So to all those who have contributed to Google's success, our thanks.

When I shook Mikhail Gorbachev's hand, my heart was pounding. We get a fair number of prominent visitors at Google, but none have thrilled me more than my former President, the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his efforts to free the Soviet bloc. Gorbachev has been my hero and inspiration for most of my life. A lot of Russians have mixed feelings about his presidency, but I always felt he was the only Russian leader who wasn't seeking power for its own sake, but because he wanted to make the world a better place for everyone.

He still does. Speaking to a hall full of rapt Googlers, Gorbachev, now a spry 73, talked about how since 1992 he has been President of Green Cross International (its American affiliate is Global Green USA) which advocates for an environmentally sustainable global community. "We cannot go on with our business-as-usual attitude" toward the environment, he warned. "Young people should be watchful. Don't forget this is your world, and you have to search for solutions."

What struck me most is the way, after all he's seen and experienced, Gorbachev insists on maintaining the sort of focused positive thinking that, say, a young tech company could learn from. Green Cross's quarterly magazine, for instance, is called The Optimist. And its slogan? "Looking beyond the horizon."

For those adept in C++, Java, C# or VB.NET, the rewards aren't always apparent. They toil over eye-straining command structures and obscure data bits about which most people are happily unaware. Yet those arcane bits are the very things that can deliver the right search results, not to mention lead to sleek interfaces and elegant functionality in computer systems for everything from ATMs to GPS.

We just concluded the Google CodeJam, our annual celebration of computer programming chops. It began September 1 with 7,500 contestants around the world. It ended today with Sergio Sancho of Buenos Aires, Argentina winning the top prize of $10,000. We flew the 50 finalists to the Googleplex for a championship round and cash prizes.

For two hours, their brains simmered and fingers flew as they focused sharply on complex computing problems. As usual, the nerds won, and we're glad they did.

Considering how important the information on your own computer is, it's always been a bit strange that you could find what you were looking for more easily if it were hidden on a website in Irkutsk than in a corner of the hard drive sitting right in front of you. Today, Google offers a first step toward fixing that anomaly with the beta introduction of Google Desktop Search, a free downloadable application for your PC.

Google Desktop Search will retrieve your email in Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express; files in Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and text; your website history in Internet Explorer; and your instant message chats in AOL Instant Messenger. In other words, if you've seen it on your computer screen, Google Desktop Search can likely help you find it. Simply put, it's like a photographic memory for your computer.

Google Desktop Search is also fast, and it integrates with your online Google web searches. While Google.com searches the web for you, the Google Desktop Search client software retrieves your relevant local information, and adds it to your search results page. And it lets you view web pages you've seen, even if you're not online anymore. You can read all the details or just download and try it yourself. We do advise you to read the privacy policy, as Google Desktop Search is different from other search products, and you should understand exactly how it protects your personal information.

All in all, we believe this is a non-trivial advance in making information accessible. But you tell us. We'd love to hear your reactions, comments and suggestions.

Just in time to find a decent pair of wellies for the winter, we've launched Froogle UK. More Britons than ever are shopping online, so we wanted to offer the broadest possible shopping selection with merchants large and small who sell throughout the U.K. With unbiased price comparisons and free listings for all participating merchants, now Froogle can assist with retail therapy on both sides of the pond.

SMS stands for Short Message Service, and Europe and Asia have thoroughly embraced this text messaging technology. Using your phone to send and receive text messages is a newer phenomenon in the U.S. Now we're getting into the fray with Google SMS. It's a way to access Google for precise information from your mobile phone or handheld device (like a BlackBerry).

Google SMS is a handy way to, say, get a listing for a nearby restaurant, find the definition of a word, or look up the price of a product, an area code or Zip code. You can even use Google SMS to calculate a tip. If your phone is enabled for text messages, just send your query to this 5-digit US shortcode: 46645 (GOOGL on most phones). Your query results are sent as text messages, not links. Learn more about using Google SMS on our help page or by sending a text message with the word 'help' to 46645.

A year ago, Dublin became the first location for Google's regional operations outside the U.S. We designed it to serve Google customers across multiple time zones and languages spanning Europe, the Middle East and Africa. There were just five of us in 2003. Today we've built a team of 150, and their passion, energy, and tech savvy enliven our new Barrow Street HQ. It's about as polyglot as we could hope for, too: this lot of Googlers come from 35 countries and speak 17 languages.

To mark the opening of the Dublin office, we were honored to have a visit by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who joined Mary Harney, An Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) to formally open the office. As Ms. Harney's appearance demonstrates, we've had incredible support from the Irish government.

We're in the heart of Dublin in a state of the art facility. If you're fluent in European languages, if you're motivated, focused and ready for a fast ride, come join us!

We talk a lot about our mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and we think we've made a reasonable start on corraling the information that's roaming around the web. Unfortunately a lot of very useful information is not online, and books, journals and other forms of printed communication stubbornly refuse to spontaneously digitize themselves to make it easier for you to find them. So we've decided to help.

Google Print is an ongoing initiative to scan printed material and put it online where it can show up in Google search results. We've expanded the program, and we're now inviting publishers to send us books that we'll scan and put online for free. There are many, many books out there, and the process of scanning takes time, but depending on your areas of interest, it's likely you'll soon be seeing more Google Print results when you use Google.

You've probably wondered why there's never been a Google domain in Norway. As it turns out, our name means "sunglasses" in Norwegian, and, well, even the non-lawyers can see where this sort of problem leads.

But now the Great Norwegian Sunglasses Crisis is history, and this week we were able to launch Norway and Kenya, our 102nd and 103rd domains, respectively. Check them all out-- and hey, anyone got an up-to-date atlas we can borrow?

We're a little obsessive about digging into hard computing problems, and we love finding more people like us. One way we find obsessive smart problem-solvers is by using a standardized test. Now standardized tests can suck, especially since you usually take them to become a broke student for years on end. Which can lead to starting a career that, if you're lucky, might eventually lead to a really cool job.

But what if there were a standardized test that led, like, immediately to the really cool job? What if, for instance, there was a Google Labs Aptitude Test?

There is. We enjoyed writing it, and if you're our kind of uber-geek, you'll enjoy taking it, and maybe you'd enjoy life as a Googler. Give it a try. The GLAT is four pages long; you can print them out below.

There has been controversy about our new Google News China edition, specifically regarding which news sources we include. For users inside the People's Republic of China, we have chosen not to include sources that are inaccessible from within that country.

This was a difficult decision for Google, and we would like to share the factors we considered before taking this course of action.

Google is committed to providing easy access to as much information as possible. For Internet users in China, Google remains the only major search engine that does not censor any web pages. However, it's clear that search results deemed to be sensitive for political or other reasons are inaccessible within China. There is nothing Google can do about this.

For last week's launch of the Chinese-language edition of Google News, we had to decide whether sources that cannot be viewed in China should be included for Google News users inside the PRC. Naturally, we want to present as broad a range of news sources as possible. For every edition of Google News, in every language, we attempt to select news sources without regard to political viewpoint or ideology. For Internet users in China, we had to consider the fact that some sources are entirely blocked. Leaving aside the politics, that presents us with a serious user experience problem. Google News does not show news stories, but rather links to news stories. So links to stories published by blocked news sources would not work for users inside the PRC -- if they clicked on a headline from a blocked source, they would get an error page. It is possible that there would be some small user value to just seeing the headlines. However, simply showing these headlines would likely result in Google News being blocked altogether in China.

We also considered the amount of information that would be omitted. In this case it is less than two percent of Chinese news sources. On balance we believe that having a service with links that work and omits a fractional number is better than having a service that is not available at all. It was a difficult tradeoff for us to make, but the one we felt ultimately serves the best interests of our users located in China. We appreciate your feedback on this issue.

We may be able to roam the globe online, but what about finding a locksmith - or a Thai place that delivers - when you need it? Meet Google Local, our local search service, which we've just enhanced with some new features. We beefed up the technology that delivers more precise results. We cleaned up the design a bit, so the maps you see with the results show the location of your find. We link to more information than before - business home pages, and ratings, reviews. And now you can zoom and pan the maps without reloading the page.

Say a blogger wants to get to a wi-fi hotspot with decent coffee somewhere around Palo Alto. She would definitely have trouble finding listings that provide the right detail through the yellow pages or on other local information sites. But by searching for [wi-fi coffee] in [Palo Alto] on Google Local, she could be caffeinating, and posting, in no time. A time-honored saying is "all politics is local." That's hard to argue, but what we also think is that some search is local, and when it is, it should be useful.

You're always welcome at Google, but wouldn't it be nice if Google came to you on occasion? Google Alerts enable you to specify topics you want to track (Hurricane Ivan, election polls, the latest Survivor odds) and deliver news updates as well as the latest changes to websites directly to your email inbox. Alerts are also a useful tool for tracking what's doing in business, whether you request updates about your own company or your competitors. Currently in test (beta) mode, Google Alerts are yours for free (no asterisks or strings attached).

To set yours up, go to the Google Alerts home page. Just specify a keyword, the type of alert you want (news, website, or both), delivery options (daily, weekly, or as it happens), and an email address. You can receive alerts in either plain text or HTML format. You can also access a central console to create new alerts, check their status or edit your existing topics. Alerts are available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Chinese (simplified) and (traditional).

We like things to be efficient and fast, so it's logical that we'd set up a shuttle service for all the Googlers driving to Mountain View from San Francisco every day. Doing it in a Googley way, we went a step further than providing a shuttle. Our bus runs on biodiesel fuel. This clean-burning alternative to gasoline is produced from renewable - and domestically grown - resources. Biodiesel contains no petroleum, is biodegradable, nontoxic, and essentially free of sulfur and aromatics. It has lower emissions than petroleum diesel, too. It's less toxic than table salt and biodegrades as fast as sugar.

It does cost more than regular diesel, but consider this: The Google shuttle carries an average of 155 employees a day. Each run totals about 75 miles - that's 11,625 miles a day we're not driving. If the average car gets 25 mpg, then we're saving some 465 gallons of gas a day, or 2,325 gallons a week - weekly savings of $4,998.75 (figuring $2.15/gallon).

Between the shuttle's wireless access and the earth-friendly fuel, it's hard to imagine getting more out of a daily commute. Although now that I think about it, a helicopter might be nice.

Do you like programming challenges? Do you like competition? Do you like money? If you can answer yes to at least two of those three questions, then Code Jam, Google's annual celebration of the art of computer science, is for you. Every autumn, thousands of programmers sign up to tackle the most ego-deflating problems Google's engineers can come up with, in a race against time and their fellow coders. After several elimination rounds, the top 50 finalists get a free trip to the final round at the Googleplex here in Mountain View, where all 50 will wind up with a share of $50,000 in prize money ($10,000 to the winner, at least $250 to all 50 finalists).

So. Are you good? We mean, like, seriously good? Let's find out. Maybe you'll score some cash. Maybe you'll wind up changing the world as a Googler yourself (yes, we'll be interested in perusing code jammers' resumes). But most important, you'll have the sheer intellectual pleasure of testing your gray matter against that of the world's best programmers. Gifted geeks may take up the Code Jam '04 gauntlet here.

Corporate schwag -- T-shirts, mugs, mousepads -- has long been a way of saying "We appreciate you" or "Please don't forget us." We're not immune from making stuff with our name on it, of course. But we do try to pick things to sell that are fun, sturdy, and usable.

We're telling you this because Google Store has had a makeover. We're not telling you to go there. But if you do, you'll have a better shopping experience (as they say) than previously, especially if you live outside the U.S. We're even open all night.

Some other Googlers have stopped by to introduce themselves, so it seems appropriate to say hello. Many Google Blog readers may not have heard the story of how GoogleGuy got started, so forgive this bit of historical rambling.

I'm a Google engineer. About three years ago, I was waiting for a program to finish compiling, and I was reading what people online were saying about Google. I remember seeing a question from a site owner about how to structure his site for better crawling, and thinking it would be great if a Googler could just pop by to answer technical questions like that. And then I thought, I'm a Google engineer. I can answer technical questions like that. So I did. Since then, I've managed to post around 2,000 messages in various web forums, setting the record straight whenever possible.

Of course, I had to have an online nickname. What if I got sick, or needed to take a break? I needed a handle that someone else could step into if necessary. After not a lot of consideration, GoogleGuy seemed just right. My primary inspiration was the Man in Black in The Princess Bride. When he returned to Buttercup, he could just hand the reins to a new Man in Black. It didn't bother him that no one knew his true identity:

Fezzik: Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid, or something like that?Man In Black: Oh no, it's just they're terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.

So there you have it. Lately, I've been pretty quiet, but at some point I'll hit the Google blog again to hold forth on, say, which is better in a url: hyphen or underscore.

Later -- but hopefully, soon,

GoogleGuy

P.S. Usually, it's a hyphen.

P.P.S. If anyone knows of a good source of iocaine powder, lemme know. I've spent the last few years building up an immunity to it just in case. But you know how it is: hard to find these days.

So Google got hacked, huh? Actually, we didn't. What happened yesterday was that someone sent the latest version of the MyDoom computer virus out for a spin, and this version flooded search engines like ours with automated searches. Fortunately, we were able to quickly identify those queries and block them, so that, for most of our users, at no point was our site significantly impaired.

Then why did some people get error messages when they tried to do searches?A very small percentage of our users and networks--most notably, a few media outlets that write about us--were heavily infected with MyDoom, so our systems temporarily blocked their queries. By noon, service for all our users had been completely restored.

What was up with that "Error-27" page?Yeah, we've just learned that our error message for blocked queries isn't the friendliest or most informative communication we've ever had with our users. Hey, we didn't think we'd ever have to show it to anyone...

Great, but I'm not a geek, okay? I just want to know if I have this thing and how to get rid of it. If you suspect your computer may have been infected with MyDoom, or just want to be sure that it isn't, we recommend that you do a search for "MyDoom" and/or "antivirus software." Plenty of reputable sites can help you check your hard drive for MyDoom and other viruses, remove whatever viruses you find, and protect your computer from getting infected in the future. If you already have a virus scanner, be sure that it has the latest virus definition file (many programs update automatically) and scan your machine again just to be sure. We'll all probably be living with viruses for a long time; let's make sure we're well-armed.

We're five years old and already they're sticking us in a museum. The Computer History Museum, to be precise, a neighbor of ours here in Mountain View that boasts the world's largest collection of artifacts from the still-young digital era. Yesterday a bunch of Googlers toured a small portion of the collection, gawking at a Victorian Era difference engine and a German Enigma code machine, chuckling over immense IBM and Cray warhorses, lusting for TRS80s and Apple IIs, and so on.

Admittedly, we were also there for a parochial purpose: to celebrate the entry into the museum's permanent collection of the first Google corkboard server rack, a do-it-yourself contraption which was one of about 30 in our fledgling company's first data center back in prehistoric, mist-enshrouded 1999. A few specs: each tray contained eight 22GB hard drives and one power supply, and the rack itself required no fewer than 86 hand-installed cooling fans. Guess the economy wasn't the only thing overheated in 1999.

If any Silicon Valley drivers have found that traffic is moving more slowly than usual these days on the southbound 101 right around Ralston, you may have us to blame. Last week we unveiled a billboard that's a bit unusual in that it promotes Google only to one very narrow constituency: engineers who are geeky enough to be annoyed at the very existence of a math problem they haven't solved, and smart enough to rectify the situation.

In other words, the billboard (which offers problem-solvers the URL to, sorry, a page containing an even harder problem), is a recruiting campaign. We've always worked hard to hire the smartest engineers we can find, and we thought this would be a cool way to find a few more. Perhaps including you. If you're a math or computer whiz who doesn't happen to live within shouting distance of Palo Alto -- good luck, and we're looking forward to hearing from you.

The great Steve Prefontaine used to say that running is about "having guts." Last Wednesday, on a hot, humid day in Central Park, about 40 of us New York Googlers showed our share, joining almost 18,000 other hardy souls in the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge, an annual 3.5-mile race which raises money for the Central Park Conservancy and New York Road Runners programs.

Central Park races are always tough, and the Corporate Challenge is worse than most, because both the start and the finish require running uphill. But for me, the third mile was the worst. The air quality on the East Side was, um, not good, and the stretch behind the Metropolitan Museum seemed harder than usual -- the ground is flat, but there was no air; it was like breathing in a plastic bag. Fortunately, then came the Cat Hill down to the Boat House, and the finish line was in sight.

Afterward, we reunited at our stand to exchange race gossip, cheer our strong showing (yours truly finished among the top 10 women), and most of all, congratulate each other for surviving the humidity and the hills.

And speaking of hills: the Corporate Challenge hits San Francisco in September. All you Mountain View Googlers - time to start stretching.

As the Google engineering department's director of search quality, I (along with my team) am responsible for maintaining the ranking technology that decides what order your results show up in when you do a Google search. It's an important job and an exciting one. I can't tell you all the secrets of what my group does, but I can tell you a non-Google story that will give you a taste of what it's like to work with large amounts of text data and computing resources.

On the last palindromic date, 20:02 02/20 2002, I was, like any good computer geek, reminded of the palindrome that appears on page 170 of the computer manual Common Lisp, the Language (2nd ed):

A man, a plan, a canoe, pasta, heros, rajahs, a coloratura, maps, snipe, percale, macaroni, a gag, a banana bag, a tan, a tag, a banana bag again (or a camel), a crepe, pins, Spam, a rut, a Rolo, cash, a jar, sore hats, a peon, a canal -- Panama!

A quick search reminded me that the record for such a palindrome, established in 1984 by Dan Hoey, was only 543 words. I immediately thought I could (and therefore should) write a program to beat that. I wrote an algorithm that searches a dictionary and figured out how to put the words together in a sentence that starts with "A man, a plan" and ends with "a canal, Panama." It took me until 1:00 a.m. that night of 02/20 (and some minor bug-bashing the next day) to produce this result -- to my knowledge, still the longest palindromic sentence ever created.

So what, you may ask? Good question. I readily admit that my accomplishment has no practical social purpose or business application. But as a story that spans 18 years from Hoey's palindrome to mine, it has a moral about how it is becoming easier to do big things. Hoey is an excellent computer scientist, but he said he spent days writing a disk-based B-tree package for his program. I was saved all this, because a dictionary now fits in main memory and I could use straightforward binary search. Thank you, Moore's Law.

Also, I was saved from having to fiddle with the dictionary because of the public domain Moby Dictionary. Thank you, Internet (and Grady Ward). The advances over the years let me combine a 100,000-word dictionary and a year-old laptop to break an 18-year old record. If you're a programmer, you could do it too: beat my record, or invent something new -- for example, can you invent a double-entendre law firm that is longer than Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe? With the resources available to you, you can accomplish a lot. Let me know what you come up with.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work -- I have some ideas that can only be tackled with a few terabytes of text and a few thousand computers.

It was hot. It was hilly. It was seven days long. But our two-person Team Google prevailed last week, cycling over 600 miles of hills and coastline to raise money for AIDS research and services. John Barabino and I joined more than 1,200 other cyclists for the grueling-but-exhilarating trip down the California coast - from San Francisco to Los Angeles - for AIDS LifeCycle 3. We were thrilled to be part of the effort to raise $5+ million dollars for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, both of which provide extensive services to people with AIDS.

We couldn't ride 600 miles as Team Google without a bit of corporate pride, and our Google cycling jerseys became such hot commodities that we wound up giving them out to other riders.

The event was so satisfying that I've decided to do it again next year. With luck, more Googlers will join Team Google. But even better would be not having to ride for this epidemic, because we will have eliminated it.

When I first started at Google, my main job was to lie in the courtyard and wait for the UPS man. My dad and I were pretty much the only ones who showed up before 11AM, so we became the de facto receptionists for a while. I'm always very nice to visitors.

When we moved to Mountain View in the summer of 1999, I switched to full-time. I interviewed a lot of people, but no dogs. Fewer of them were online back then, though of course it's hard to tell sometimes. Eventually, I returned to part-time consulting and spent a lot of time watching ducks in a pond near our office. Fascinating, but ultimately unfulfilling.

Now my office is on the third floor. I take the elevator these days, since I injured my right leg last year. There are more dogs at Google now, but many of them are very small, like King Charles Spaniels. And Yorkies. When dad parks me outside the Google cafe, I love getting attention from all the passers-by. They even know my name! And there's barbecue on the patio every day during the summer. Life is good.

One of the things I like best about Google is that we're the kind of company that, when a user writes in to suggest that we honor the once-every-122-years Transit of Venus on our home page, we actually do it!

My name is Dennis, and I'm the guy who draws the Google doodles. But the doodle tradition started here before I did. The first doodle was produced by (who else?) Larry and Sergey, who, when they attended the Burning Man festival in summer 1998, put a little stick figure on the home page logo in case the site crashed and someone wanted to know why nobody was answering the phone. By the time I began an internship here in the summer of 2000, the company was producing doodles on a regular basis. At the time I was a Stanford undergrad majoring in art and computer science, and, although I hadn't been hired to do anything remotely related to logo design, I eventually stumbled into my first doodle gig (Bastille Day, July 2000, for which I did a fairly boring flag motif).

And I've done all the doodles ever since; I've produced almost 150 by now. The doodles are only a small part of my actual job (as Google's international webmaster, I'm responsible for managing all our international site content, which keeps me plenty busy), but it's definitely my favorite. Holding up my mockups and then holding my breath while Larry and Sergey do their "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" emperor thing is never boring, and I love the fact that my little niche within this company turned out to be something so cool and creative and, well, Google-y.

What doodles will I be doing next? Well, telling you in advance would spoil the fun of it, and I have no idea anyway. If you've got any ideas of your own, feel free post them in the Web Search Help Forum. Who knows; you may just make a little Google history yourself.

"Though women represent nearly half the U.S labor force and more then half of all undergraduates, just 18% of scientists and engineers employed in industry are women and only about 20% of students graduating with majors in engineering, physics, computer science, and similar fields are women." This may not be surprising news, and that's a problem. But the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology is working on a host of programs that can change these numbers.

Google participates with the Institute to recognize outstanding women students in computer science and technology through the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships. The Institute has just announced the 2004 winners: eight women who have each won $10,000 scholarships, and 11 more honorees who receive $1,000 scholarships.

We salute the winners. May all their successes inspire lots of other women and girls to pursue their (technical) dreams.

Long before cooking at Google, I worked in the kitchen of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel with a Southern gent named Robert Brown. Story was that at one time in his life, Mr. Brown had cooked for Elvis Presley. Mr. Brown never gave us the details, but he did let us know that the King loved his fried chicken and biscuits.

Mr. Brown had a fluffy white cloud of hair floating above a face the color of molasses, garnished with a big gold tooth protruding from his mouth and thick dark glasses he never took off, even in the kitchen. He was a primal cook - he couldn't tell you why he did what he did, but he knew when it was "GOOOOOD." It was better than good. It was the best southern fried chicken I had ever tasted, and still is.

One day I got up the courage to ask him for the recipe, and he told me, "Charlie, I normally don't give out my prize recipes, but you, boy, have got the touch. And none of my boys are in the business, so I will give it to you." The secret to his fried chicken was marinating it in buttermilk for a long time, and adding just about every damn spice he had on hand.

Whenever I serve it today, I can hear Robert Brown saying, "Charlie, you make this chicken for people, you'll be making friends for life." And I hope I have. Here's the Google-sized recipe, plus a handy "recipe adjuster" if you're cooking for fewer people than I do.

Charlie AyersGoogle Executive Chef

Buttermilk Fried Chicken Elvis Loved *Google-sized portions; read all the way through to get the total amounts needed*

Dredge the marinated chicken pieces in the dry herbs/flour/cornstarch mixture mix.Fry the dredged chicken in a large skillet with hot peanut oil @ 375 degrees. Once chicken has reached a golden brown color, finish cooking it in the oven.

Every month the Google Zeitgeist paints an aggregate portrait of how users all over the world are searching Google, a statistical snapshot that invariably produces its share of surprises. This month's Zeitgeist finds web surfers in a somber mood. You put grim topics like Nick Berg, Iraq, Lynndie England and (shudder) graduation atop the list of fastest-growing search terms, while banishing "Friends," prom hairstyles, Amber Brkich and other trivial pursuits to the ranks of the most swiftly forgotten. It's not surprising that more of you searched on cicadas last month than sought out such wholesomer nature queries as beach, sun, roses and trees. But frankly, we don't know what to make of the fact that the most popular animal on Google in April was not dogs, cats, fish or horses, but bears.

One reassuring note, though - we're all still obsessed with "American Idol." At least this week.

This being the tail end of both National Bike Month and Ride Your Bike to Work Week, we hope you turned green, as many Googlers did, by pumping your way to the office (and reducing carbon emissions along the way). Even though the Mountain View, CA Googleplex is close by several freeways, it seems quite a number of us managed to make our way in on spokes. The rewards were considerable: a free bike tune-up, bottled water, and the all-important commemorative T-shirt. Not bad for a Thursday at the office.

Well, we managed to break rules with our very first couple of posts here. We started our blog with a post about recruiting and didn't sign it. Then we changed it once it was up. You just don't do that with a blog, according to half the Google staff and all the Blogger folk. They've made that opinion abundantly clear to us with emails, hallway lectures and posts on their own blogs laying out all the ways this launch could have gone better.

So yes, we do get that blogs are all about communication with readers, not processed info dump-and-run. And we get that people want to know who's giving them that information. We also get that this is a new medium and that despite the conventions of the blogosphere, not everything is set in stone when it comes to blog style and tone.

So here's the deal. When we post something that's unsigned, it's just general Google information that we think may be of interest to you. Apply whatever filter you deem appropriate. When something is signed by Larry or Sergey or another Googler, that's really them talking about something important to them. You'll likely see lots of both kinds of posts, depending on the subject and who's around to write about it.

In the grand tradition of Google launches, this blog is an experiment. Consider it Googleblog (beta). We're not going to make it entirely first person, because the logical people to write Google blog posts don't always have time to do that. We're not going to make it entirely anonymous because people here have things to say directly to you. And it would be boring as lint if all posts got processed to meet "corporate style." So we'll try different things and see where the pain points are. That's the beauty of a blog -- you can change direction real time to make it work better.

Blogs are living things. Ours was just born and is still adjusting to the loud noises and the bright lights. It's gonna be awhile before we get our driver's license, so you decide if you want to sit in the passenger seat while we figure out which one's the gear shift and which is the turn signal. One way or another, it should be an interesting ride.

One of the unfortunate effects of leaving no stone unturned to build a comprehensive web index is that occasionally you uncover a site that should never have been exposed to the light of day. It's particularly unsettling when that site is devoted to spreading hatred and the result shows up in a search for the group being attacked. We cannot state strongly enough our distaste and displeasure that just such a hate site has been in our results lately. To learn more about why this happens, read our explanation of the incident.

When we announced the opening of our engineering office in Zurich, a lot of Europeans seemed pleased about the possibility of working for Google without a commute to California. Zurich draws Italians, French, Swiss, Germans, and other Europeans, and is easier to reach from most parts of the continent than the Amphitheatre Parkway exit off highway 101.

We recognize that talented engineers live in every time zone, not just Silicon Valley. That's fine with us, because when it comes to solving technical problems Google benefits from global perspectives, as well as a diversity of languages and working hours. And we want to accommodate people who want to work with us, but who may not feel like uprooting their their lives, even for Charlie's cooking.

So, if you're looking for a place to plug into Google, we're trying to make it easy for you. We're looking for talented software engineers, top programmers and visionary computer scientists to tackle everything from distributed systems and information retrieval to algorithms, UI, and scalability challenges. And of course to unplug the lava lamps occasionally so they don't overheat.

Anyway, I'm excited the blog's up. We're going to post stuff here - regular bloggy things: What Larry had for breakfast. What Sergey thinks of that Hellboy movie. Which Dawson's Creek character reminds us most of Eric.

We're proposing some guidelines to help curb the problem of Internet software that installs itself without telling you, or behaves badly once it gets on your computer. We've been hearing a lot of complaints about this lately and it seems to be getting worse. We think it's important that you retain control of your computer and that there be some clear standards in our industry. Let us know if you think these guidelines are useful or if you have suggestions to improve them.